December Devotional

The four hundred years between the close of the Old Testament (Malachi) and the opening of the New Testament (Matthew) is known to historians as the 'Silent Years.' For four centuries, the audible voice of prophecy in Israel completely ceased. No visions, no blazing chariots, no angelic announcements. To the agonizingly oppressed Jewish people living under the brutal heel of the Roman Empire, the silence must have felt like absolute, terrifying divine abandonment.

But silence is not absence. The silence was not proof that God had abandoned the planet; the silence was the necessary, agonizing pause of the symphony conductor exactly one second before bringing down the baton. God was meticulously orchestrating the rise and fall of absolute global empires (Greece and Rome) to specifically construct a universal language and a universal road system explicitly designed for the rapid deployment of the Gospel. He works furiously in the dark.